Decoding Nazi Germany’s Enigma Code: Review of “The Imitation Game” | Literaturesalon's Blog Decoding Nazi Germany’s Enigma Code: Review of “The Imitation Game” Decoding Nazi Germany’s encrypting machine, Enigma, was no easy task. Invented by the German engineer Arthur Scherbius at the end of WWI, Enigma machines were used by the Nazis during WWII to exchange (encode and decipher) secret messages pertaining to national security and strategy of war. Three Polish cryptologists who worked for Polish military intelligence—Marian Rejewski, Jerzy Rozycki and Henryk Zygalski—were the first to begin deciphering Enigma messages, using theoretical mathematics and information given by French military intelligence. During the war, the Allies captured an actual Enigma machine, enabling them to study its hardware and make further progress in figuring out how it worked. Two compatible Enigma machines would have to work together, the first one encoding a secret message, the second decoding it. An operator would type in a message in German. The Enigma machine would automatically convert each letter into a different letter of the alphabet, through a process of random substitution.

The encrypted text would be sent to another operator whose deciphering machine was similar and compatible with the first operator’s machine: only in this case the second Enigma machine would convert the random letters into plain German. A new movie, The Imitation Game, directed by Morten Tyldum and starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Keira Knightley, focuses on the life of British mathematician and cryptologist Alan Turing, who is credited for helping decode the Nazi Enigma machines. Loosely based on Andrew Hodges biography, Alan Turing: The Enigma (Princeton University Press, 2014), this movie succeeds as a character study as well as a very interesting historical thriller. Turing faces barriers not only from the Navy Commander Denniston, but also from his colleagues, who initially resent the fact he’s entirely focused on building a machine at the expense of their collective work. Portrayed as slightly autistic, without friends lacking a sense of humor, Turing ends up being a fascinating character nonetheless. In fact, his flaws make him seem all the more unique. He goes against the grain to invent the machine capable of solving the puzzles that hundreds of brilliant minds working in the field cannot.

Turing’s more sensitive side evolves in his friendship with his colleague Joan Clark (marvelously played by Keira Knightly), whom he asks to marry him in the spring of 1941. Although she accepts despite the fact Turing confesses to her his homosexuality, soon thereafter he changes his mind and breaks up with her in a dramatic scene. Turing’s homosexuality becomes as central to the plot of the movie as his creation of the machine that breaks the Enigma codes. A few years after the war, in 1952, Turing, by then 39 years old, has a sexual and romantic relationship with a homeless young man named Arnold Murray. When one of Murray’s acquaintances burglarizes his house, Turing calls the police. During the investigation, the detectives called to the scene discover that Turing is homosexual, a criminal offense in Britain at the time. He’s charged with “gross indecency” and given the choice of going to prison or two years of probation (which includes taking hormonal treatment to reduce his libido). On June 8, 1954, the man who helped save millions of lives and shorten the war by at least two years tragically commits suicide by ingesting cyanide.

The movie implies that the hormonal treatment, criminal charges and social isolation have a lot to do with Alan Turing’s untimely death, while the Hodges biography indicates this could have been an accidental death. To transform a messy, complex human life into a drama, a film has to change many aspects of that life. In a recent review of The Imitation Game for Slate, L. V. Anderson goes over some of the ways in which the film deviates from Turing’s life as described by Hodges’s biography: The (real) Alan Turing depicted by Hodges in Alan Turing: The Enigma, though eccentric, was a much more likable and social person than the character in the film. He was well liked by his fellow cryptologists working at Bletchley Park, who describe him as “a very easily approachable man” and claimed to be “very very fond of him”. In the film, Alan’s more of a loner who is taught to value human emotion by Joan Clark, his friend and confidante. The movie also exaggerates Alan Turing’s role in single-handedly deciphering the Enigma machine, downplaying the roles of others and of the Polish precedents.

The movie romanticizes Alan’s early crush for a fellow student at Sherborn School, a boy named Christopher Morcom with whom he shares a love of cryptology (in real life, L. V. Anderson states, they shared a love of chemistry and math). In the movie this love is described as reciprocal, while in the biography it appears to be a more ambiguous relationship, probably just friendship on Christopher’s part. All these changes, in my estimation, add rather than take away from the strength of the film. They render Alan Turing’s scientific contributions seem all the more significant and heroic while the tragic irony of his death becomes all the more acute. After all, the man who helped save the world from the Nazi regime—a regime that killed homosexuals for being gay—is forced by the British government to choose between prison and a debilitating hormone treatment, in a “free” democratic country to which he had devoted his mind and his life. Cipher Machines Cipher Machines The History and Technology of the Enigma Cipher Machine Enigma Early History Enigma Machine The Enigma cipher machine was invented by a German engineer, Arthur Scherbius, who applied for his patent on February 23, 1918.

This was in the same time frame that 3 other inventors from 3 other countries also applied for a patent for a rotary cipher machine. Scherbius first tried to sell his design to the German military but finding no interest decided to start up his own company to manufacture the Enigma for commercial sale. The Enigma machine was first offered for sale in 1923, but had few takers. The first model A and model B machines were heavy at 110 lbs. and also cumbersome to use. These first models had a typewriter incorporated into the device but did not have a reflector. The model C came out in 1925, which was much smaller and lighter and included the reflector. The typewriter was replaced by a lamp panel, requiring the user to write down the results of ciphering and deciphering a message. The model D was unveiled in 1927, and it was this model that saw commercial interest from many countries. The German Navy adopted the Enigma in 1926 and the Army in 1928. Both services modified the Enigma for their purposes, and would continue to modify their Enigmas and keep them different through the end of WW2.

They both added the plugboard, which swaps letters in pairs before and after the signal goes to the rotors, adding a significant cryptologic strength to the Enigma. By this time the weight of the Army Enigma was 26 lbs., much lighter than the original machines but still heavy for a battlefield cipher. This was a much stronger cipher than the US M-209 but the US cipher machine weighed only 6 lbs., did not require batteries and had a printer so it could be operated by one person. Enigma Technology The Enigma machine was an ingenious advance in technology, both for the strength of the encipherment and for the ease of use for the operator. It is an electro-mechanical machine resembling a typewriter, with a plugboard to swap letters, rotors to further scramble the alphabet and a lamp panel to display the result. Most models of Enigma used 3 or 4 rotors with a reflector to allow the same settings to be used for enciphering and deciphering. Most of the description which follows will be for the Army 3 rotor machine, which you can see in pictures from my collection.

The key was made up of 3 settings: the set of letters to be swapped in the plugboard, the order of the 3 rotors from the available set of 5 and finally the A to Z letter setting for each rotor. The theoretical key space is 3 X 10114, which is far larger than the number of atoms in the universe. Even as used by the Nazis, the key space was 1023, which means 100,000 operators, each checking one key setting every second would take twice the age of the universe to break the code. Despite these overwhelming odds, the Allies did just that. Each component will be described in turn as the electrical connection goes from the keyboard, through the plugboard, through the rotors and back to the plugboard before finally lighting up a light bulb on the lamp board. QWERTZUI Keyboard The keyboard has a QWERTZUI layout, without any numbers, space bar or any other keys. Pressing a key will electrically open a signal from the letter pressed and will also mechanically advance from 1 to 3 rotors.

Touch typing does not work because of the pressure required to advance the rotors and since there is no printer and the letter lit up has to be written down. Each letter will be enciphered from 7 to 9 times and because of the design of the reflector, no letter will encrypt to itself. Note also the data plate under the "V". Plugboard The layout of the plugboard matches the QWERTZUI layout of the keyboard, which is also the layout for the lamp panel. Plugboard cables use plugs which look like the standard 2-prong European power plugs. The Nazis always used 10 cables, swapping 20 letters for their daily key. While using a variable number of cables would provide a stronger cipher, the tradeoff would be a greater possibility of errors. Interestingly, using more cables gives a stronger cipher up to 11, then perhaps counterintuitively, the strength of the cipher declines dramatically. You can follow this logic mathematically in the section below, Calculation of Key Space .

Reflector (on left with red "B") with 3 rotors, view of one rotor on spindle After the electrical signal leaves the plugboard, it goes to an entry wheel, the 3 rotors, the reflector, then reverses course back through the 3 rotors, the entry wheel, the plugboard and then lights up a light under one of the 26 characters. The British worked hard to figure out the encipherment used for the entry wheel, only to be told by the Polish codebreakers there was no encipherment for that wheel. Each character is therefore enciphered by each wheel twice and by the reflector, giving 7 separate encipherments. The plugboard may or may not encipher a character, so the final result is that after going through the plugboard twice each character can be enciphered between 7 and 9 times. There are 3 rotors in the machine, from a selection of 5 available. Each rotor has the numbers 01 through 26 on its circumference, representing the letters of the alphabet.

The daily key is a choice of the 3 out of 5 rotors, their order on the spindle and the rotational setting of 01 to 26 for each rotor. Also, each rotor has a setting for the location to cause the wheel on its left to advance. The rotors advance "odometer style", the rightmost rotor advances after each letter enciphered, at some setting on that rotor it causes the middle rotor to advance, which would then happen every 26 letters. The leftmost rotor advances at some setting of the middle rotor and then advances every 26 rotations of the middle rotor. This gives a message depth of 26 X 26 X 26 = 17,576, which means that after that many characters of a message are enciphered, the encipherment repeats. The notch causes the turnover to occur 8 characters before the location of the notch. For example, the rotor above has a notch in position "D", so the wheel to its left would advance after moving past position "V". The notch on the leftmost rotor has no effect. The Nazis did not change the position of the notch and each wheel had the notch on a different letter.

The Allies were able to exploit this fact, since this made each wheel unique. Also, the regular, odometer style stepping of the rotors was a major security flaw, because only one wheel would change and all other positions would remain the same for 26 consecutive characters. By comparison, the US Sigaba and the Swiss NEMA cipher machines were specifically designed to provide irregular stepping of the rotors. The reflector simply swaps each letter in pairs so the same setting can be used for enciphering or deciphering. The reflector was fixed in the Enigma, so this setting was known to the Allied cryptographers after capturing the first Enigma. Also, this reciprocal design means that no letter enciphers to itself, which is another cryptologic shortcoming exploited by the Allies. The 4 wheel Naval Enigma used a reflector that was movable, so it could be set to 26 different positions. Also, there were 2 reflector wheels to select from, greatly increasing the complexity of the Naval Enigma. Lampboard The lampboard follows the same layout as the keyboard and plugboard. Each letter has a light bulb under it, which lights up to show the enciphered or deciphered letter, which must then be written down.

There is a filter attached inside the lid which can be installed over the lampboard to reduce the amount of light emitted from the Enigma. When operating the Enigma at night close to enemy lines, the filter keeps the operator from being easily spotted. The light bulbs are powered by a 4.5 volt battery or a transformer plugged into a 220 volt outlet. The lampboard is the only output, so the Enigma machine usually required 2 operators, one to operate the keyboard and the other to write down the message. Wiring Diagram - the "A" key is pressed, causing 9 encipherments, then the "H" lights up. You can play this animation to follow the electrical charge as it advances through the Enigma. The Enigma wiring diagram shows an example of an "A" being pressed on the keyboard and the path of the encipherment is highlighted until the "H" lights up on the lampboard. The "A" is first enciphered to an "O" on the plugboard, then goes to the rotor assembly.

The "O" will be enciphered 3 times going through the 3 rotors, once more going through the reflector and 3 more times going through the 3 rotors in reverse. At this point the letter coming into the plugboard is an "M" which gets enciphered into an "H", which causes the "H" bulb to light up on the lampboard. In this example, the "A" was enciphered 9 times, which is the maximum number any letter can be enciphered. Since 20 of 26 letters are swapped in the plugboard, it is possible that one or both encipherments on the plugboard could be skipped, yielding a total of 7 or 8 encipherments for some letters. Nazi Operating Procedures To use the Enigma machine, the user must change the settings to the daily key. This involves installing the 3 rotors from the 5 available in the correct order. Then he would plug in the 10 plugboard cables, connecting the 10 pairs of letters as specified in the daily setting. Lastly, he would rotate the 3 rotors to the prescribed setting.

All these daily settings would be sent to him in a code book sent once a month, longer on boats and submarines. Using Enigma in the field Now, the user will select a 3 letter code of his choosing and encipher that code twice. Then he would reset the rotors to this new 3 letter code and encipher the message he wants to send. Some users used the same 3 letter code repeatedly, for instance their girlfriend's initials or the consecutive or diagonal letters on the keyboard, such as "WER" or "QAY". This was a violation of Nazi procedures which the Allies were able to exploit to break the code on many occasions. To decipher a message, he would reset the rotors to the daily setting and decode the first 6 characters of the message. It should be a 3 character code, repeated, for example "BTLBTL". Now he would reset the rotors to "BTL" and key in the rest of the message, writing down the letter lit up with each key stroke. The result will be the plaintext message. In the field, the Nazis normally had one person keying in the letters and someone else writing down the message.

There may even be a third person to carry the plaintext message to the intended recipient or the enciphered message to a radio operator. Later in the war, the 3 character code was sent only once instead of twice, eliminating an easy method of Allied codebreaking. The strength of the Enigma cipher gave the Nazis complete confidence in the security of their messages. Even when faced with clear evidence that the Enigma messages were compromised, they steadfastly refused to believe it and instead attributed any security breach to spies or coincidence. While the design was very strong, there were design and operational choices the Nazis made that weakened the encipherment. For instance, the fact that no character could encipher to itself, always using 10 plugboard cables, enciphering the 3 letter message setting twice, etc. all helped the Allies break the Enigma code. Breaking the Enigma Code in WW2 Marian Rejewski The German Navy and Army adopted the Enigma in 1926 and 1928 but only added the plugboard in 1930.

The Polish were understandably nervous about German aggression and on September 1, 1932 the Polish Cipher Bureau hired a 27-year-old Polish mathematician, Marian Rejewski, along with two fellow Poznan University mathematics graduates, Henryk Zygalski and Jerzy Rózycki, to try to break the code of this new machine. This was an early insight into the role of mathematics in codebreaking. Panzer General Heinz Guderian on communications truck with Enigma machine The 3 Polish codebreakers had access to an Enigma machine, but did not know the rotor wiring. Through a German spy, the French gained access to two months of Enigma key settings, but without the rotors were not able to make use of this information. They passed along this information to their British and Polish colleagues and the Polish were able to quickly solve the Enigma puzzle, recreating the 3 rotors then in use. This was in March 1933 and they continued to break the code until the Nazis invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, marking the start of WW2.

The Polish not only broke the code, but invented the first electro-mechanical deciphering machine to systematically break the Enigma code. They invented this device in the fall of 1938 and called their invention the "bombe". There is a debate over whether this was named for the ice cream treat they were eating at the time of the idea or whether the ticking sound of the working bombe sounded like an incoming Nazi bomb. The bombe consisted of 6 Enigma machines in series, so that all 6 possible rotor settings could be tested at once. Using the bombe, the Poles were able to determine the Enigma rotor settings and decipher the first daily Nazi messages within two hours, and in real time for the rest of the day. Unfortunately, when the invasion of Poland began, the Nazis added 2 new rotors, increasing the possible combination of rotors from 6 to 60 (5 X 4 X 3). This made the Polish bombe ineffective, with the battle of wits tilting back in favor of the Nazi codemakers. The bombe and the secret of their codebreaking success was a closely guarded secret by the Poles until a month before the Nazi invasion.

In a conference near Warsaw, on July 26, 1939, the Polish codebreakers finally told their story of almost 7 years of codebreaking success to the astonished British and French codebreakers. They knew of the impending Nazi invasion of Poland and gave their allies copies of the Nazi Enigma with the plugboard and information on the bombe and Nazi operational procedures. Without this head start, the British effort to break the Enigma would have been greatly delayed. Bletchley Park - headquarters for British codebreaking Alan Turing After the outbreak of WW2 and the information from the Poles, the British codebreaking efforts began in earnest. They used an estate north of London, Bletchley Park, as their headquarters. There would eventually be over 11,000 people working in secret on this codebreaking effort. The British mathematician, Alan Turing, would lead the effort. Using the Polish experience in bombe making, they developed a bombe with 36 Enigmas in series, with the first one delivered in May 1940. This would not test all combination of rotors, and a brute force attack would take too long, in any case.

Several contributions were made by Turing and others to eliminate many impossible rotor settings to allow the 36 Enigma bombe to figure out the rotor settings in a reasonable amount of time. Nazi U-boat in WW2 The British were routinely breaking the Nazi Air Force Enigma messages by May 1940 through the end of the war, mainly due to sloppy operating procedures and consistent cribs. The Army and Navy versions took longer to solve, but were solved intermittently as changes were made to each service procedures and Enigmas. The greatest challenge was the Naval Enigma, with its 4 rotors out of 8 available and the strict operational procedures they practiced. Before the US entered the war, the Nazi U-boats were the greatest threat to Britain. They were dependent on supplies from the US and the Nazis were sinking on average 60 ships per month. Ships were sent over in convoys and the Nazis employed a strategy of "wolfpacks" to wait until a dozen or so U-boats were on hand to swarm the convoy. This strategy was so efficient, Winston Churchill was later quoted as saying, "The only thing that ever really frightened me during the war was the U-boat peril".

The Nazi strategy was to completely blockade Britain and win a quick victory over all of Europe before the US would enter the war. The first time the British were able to decipher the Naval Enigma traffic was due to the capture of enemy code books from the U-110 in May of 1941. The captain, Fritz Julius Lemp, died trying to scuttle his submarine. The HMS Bulldog was towing the U-boat back to England when it was ordered to sink it in the Atlantic so the Germans would not suspect the intact Enigma machine and codebooks were captured. Captain Fritz Julius Lemp, sinking of U-110, Enigma operator inside U-110 HMS Bulldog captured the U-110 Nazi U-boat After the breakthrough from the capture of the U-110 codebooks, the British found other creative ways to get later codebooks. They discovered that the lightly armed weather ships had Enigma machines on them and the British would stage the capture of one of these weather ships in such a way that the Germans thought they were chance happenings and the ship sank with its cryptographic treasures.

They also were able to get the codebooks from a few other U-boats, the most famous and courageous was the boarding of the already sinking U-559. Valuable codebooks were captured, but 2 British sailors lost their lives as the U-boat sank. Sinking of U-117 - August 1943 The British were zealous in protecting the source of their Enigma secrets. They were also careful to make sure that any actions taken from Enigma messages had a "cover story" that would keep the Nazis from changing their machines or procedures. For instance, if the British knew that two U-boats would surface in the mid-Atlantic at a specific location for refueling, they would have a spotter plane "accidentally" find them and then have a ship nearby to sink the submarines before they could disengage and dive. As a result of the Allies success in decrypting Enigma traffic, they were able to turn around the earlier Nazi rout in the Battle of the Atlantic. The Nazi U-boat menace turned into a disaster with 725 of 1155 U-boats and 82% of 35,000 sailors never to return from sea.

One incredible side note to the Enigma story is the level of secrecy maintained for decades after WW2. About 11,000 people in Bletchley Park and 4,000 in the US worked on deciphering Enigma traffic. Despite this widespread knowledge, the secret was not disclosed until the UK government publicly acknowledged this secret in 1974, almost 30 years after the war was over. Some claim the Allied cryptologic success shortened the war by 2 years, others placed even higher value on this success. As Winston Churchill told King George VI, "It was thanks to Ultra that we won the war." Beginning of Modern Computing US bombe The British bombe was a wonder of mechanical and electrical engineering. It had the equivalent function of 36 Enigma machines in series and was capable of figuring out the rotor settings for each day's keys in about 12 hours. From that point, all messages could be read in real time. In all, 210 British bombes were built during the war and all were destroyed at the end of the war.

The bombe is not to be confused with another British decryption machine, the Colossus, which was used to decipher Nazi teletype messages. When the US entered the war, they took on the task of building a bombe to decipher the 4 rotor Naval Enigma machine. This bombe necessarily had to be faster to decipher the greater combination of rotor settings by having 4 rotors out of an available 8 used in the Naval Enigma. Compared to the 3 rotor Enigma, the number of rotor combination increased from 60 to 336 (8 X 7 X 6). Each bombe had the equivalent function of 16 four rotor Enigmas. They were 34 times faster than their British counterparts, each drum rotating at an amazing 1725 RPMs (almost 29 revolutions per second). These bombes were truly behemoths, each one 10 feet long and weighing 2.5 tons. A total of 121 US bombes were built by NCR during the war.

For those mathematically inclined, the following will be a calculation of the key space of the Enigma machine, both the theoretical design limit and the key space as used by the Nazis. Maximum # of plugboard settings The plugboard was a military addition to the commercial Enigma machine, and this addition added a considerable cryptologic strength to the resulting encipherment. The theoretical maximum number of plugboard settings is a function of 3 variables: the number of plugboards cables (p), the number if groupings of 2p letters out of 26 and the number of ways to interconnect the 2p group of letters. The chart below shows the # of plugboard settings for each possibility of 0 to 13 cables. Maximum # rotor settings The internal wiring of each rotor could be constructed in 26! different combinations. Since 3 rotors are used, the number of combinations when selecting 3 rotors out of 26! are: 26!

X (26!-1) X (26!-2) = 65,592,937,459,144,468,297,405,473,480,371,753,615,896,841,298,988,710,328,553,805,190,043,271,168,000,000 Each of the 3 rotors could initially be set to any letter: 26 X 26 X 26 = 17,576 The right-most rotor advances one letter after each key is pressed, the second and third rotors advance one letter after a full revolution of the rotor to its right.

The setting for the notch to enable this was also changeable to any letter of the alphabet: 26 X 26 = 676 See detailed pictures of the entire Nazi cipher collection Pictured above is the Enigma cipher machine and other German field equipment used to send Enigma messages to and from the battlefield. The "Torn E.b" was the most common field radio used by all the military services. The morse code key, headset and microphone would be used to send and receive Enigma messages. The field phones were for voice calls and were only as secure (or unsecure) as the phone line. Despite approximately 35,000 German Enigma machines manufactured, there are currently only about 350 known to exist today, with another 200 suspected to be in "hidden" collections. Here is one of the known machines: a 3-rotor Army Enigma machine, serial #A12760, made in Berlin in September 1941. It is in original condition except for some newer varnish on the outside. Everything works as it did 70 years ago. It has the German Army Waffenamt stamp on the lid and each rotor.

Waffenamt means weapons office and this stamp is an eagle over swastika arms inspection stamp with the letters "Wa.A" for Waffenamt followed by the inspector #618. The rotors are from 3 other Enigma machines and are serial numbered A3386 [I], A16411 [II] and A13529 [III]. The 3rd rotor is from an Enigma machine currently at the CIA museum in Langley, VA. Rotors IV and V are missing. This Enigma machine was used by the Nazis in occupied Norway and post-war by the Norwegian Police Special Branch (Overvaakingspolitiet). The Norwegians changed the wiring in the rotors and the reflector and also stenciled the "40." on the outside and on the battery box. The Torn E.b radio was also left behind by the Nazis in Norway after the war. Enigma machines are now a collector's item for the über geek - a standard Army Enigma has increased in value from $20K to over $200K in the past decade.

A record price of $269,000 for a 3-wheel Enigma was fetched in April, 2015 at Bonhams. The record price for a 4-wheel Enigma of $463,500 was achieved in a Bonhams' auction in December, 2016. To-be-Auctioned Rare WWII German Coding Machine 'Enigma' Awakens Memories of WWII 'Intelligence' Battle SHARE: Facebook Twitter British auction house, Bonhams, is putting up a rare German code machine used by the Nazis for coding their military messages during the Second World War in auction this coming October 29. The said device known as ‘Enigma’ is expected to fetch over 50,000 pounds ($79,775). the said sale brings to mind the role this certain machine had during World War II and the counter-measures the Allies, particularly the British, had to do – counter-agents that included the making of the forerunners of modern-age computers. The particular machine in the hands of the auction house was built in 1944 and was used for a time by the Nazis in the remaining days of WWII.

The WWII gadget may have seen little action but a specialist from the London auction house putting it under the hammer was quick to note that the machine is ‘untouched and unrestored’ – meaning it still has its original parts intact and did not undergo modification after WWII ended. The Enigma in ‘Enigma’ Machines Enigma machines were mechanical cipher machines invented by a German engineer Arthur Scherbius after World War I ended. Eraly models of the Enigma machines were used commercially in the 1920s. The German Navy was the first to buy one model, modified it and used it for their operations in 1926. The German military followed suit a few years later. It was also bought and adopted by a number of countries for government and military use. The Enigma machines, however, became heavily connected to the Nazis when they decided to use it before and during WWII. Among the many models of the cipher machine, those used by the German military in the Second World War is the most discussed. An early Enigma machine had three sets of rotors which proceeded to code messages typed through its keypad by ‘scrambling’ it. This scrambled message was then sent via Morse code.

Only another Enigma machine configured in the same pattern as the one which made the message would be able decode it. In the later part of World War II, the Nazis built more complex Enigma machines which had sets of five rotors instead of three. These rotors were interchanged to greatly increase the number of possible variants, thus, decoding the message made by the model would be more difficult without the use of another Enigma machine configured in the same way as it. Breaking through the Code The Polish Cipher Bureau were the first to decipher coded messages – German military texts at that – enciphered with the use of the Enigma machines. the said success resulted from the efforts made by three Polish cryptologists – Marian Rejewski, Jerzy Różycki and Henryk Zygalski, all three worked for the Polish military intelligence. Rejewski was the one who studied the device through reverse engineering, figuring it out with the use of theoretical mathematics and other materials supplied by the French military intelligence.

Afterwards, the three mathematicians made built mechanical devices which would break Enigma-enciphered messages including the Bomba Kryptologiczna (cryptologic bomb) or siply known as Bomba in October of 1938. The following year, in the 25th of July, the Poles allowed representatives from the French and British military intelligence to garner the knowledge about the discovered know-hows on Enigma decryption including the devices they used, the Zyglaski sheets and the Bomba. Without these shared knowledge and these technological gifts from the Poles and the work of the three mathematicians/cryptologists – Rejewski, Rozycki and Zygalski – decryption of the Nazis’ coded military texts by the British may have been a next-to-impossible feat. the turning-over of deciphering devices by the Poles to the British was a fateful event as shortly after it, Germans invaded Poland. Bletchley Park, the hub of the efforts made by British intelligence to decode Enigma-enciphered messages. World War II When World War II broke out, the German military employed the Enigma machines and upgraded these devices in part of their efforts to keep their communications secret.

The British, on the other hand, armed with the devices and the knowledge they got from the Poles put up an intelligence hub in Bletchley Park devoted solely to decoding Nazi Germans’ cryptic messages. Germans did everything to keep their codes secret but the team in Bletchley, including members of the Women’s Royal Naval Service, also put up so much effort in trying to decode them and most succeeded in that. The role played by Alan Mathison Turing, a British mathematician, was also very vital in the deciphering of the German coded messages produce by the Enigma machines with codes which the enemy changed everyday. Turing made his own device dubbed as Bombe, from the Polish Bomba, which helped speed up the code-breaking procedure. The device made by the mathematical genius was not able to decipher codes on its own automatically. However, when analysts had manually broken through with a few letters or words like names of generals, places or even common short words like ‘they’ and ‘to’, it then proceeded to test the hundreds of other possible combinations to put the code together. There were over a hundred of these said machines produced during the height of WWII but after the war, they were all destroyed.

A replica has been built in 2008 and can be seen in Bletchley Park which is now converted into a museum. Post Office engineer Tommy Flowers also did a great contribution during the Second World War when it came to code deciphering. In his quest to beat the Nazis’ intelligence arm, he constructed the world’s first proper computer dubbed as Colossus. Flowers developed the machine using a network fitted with thousands of electronic valves. It was able to break through the Lorenz Cipher, which the Nazis’ high command used for messages though of too sensitive to transmit using the Enigma machines. For a fact, the Colossus Mark II, was finished less than one week before the Normandy landings giving the Allies a deciding edge in the last stages of WWII. Intelligence amassed from the Germans’ Enigma transmission. known as Ultra, had been a very vital factor in the Allies’ victory over Germany’s Third Reich. ‘It was thanks to Ultra that we won the war,’ British Prime Minister Winston Churchill reportedly told King George VI after winning the war. Official chronicler of the whereabouts of British intelligence during WWII, Sir Harry Hinsley, also held Ultra in high esteem.

“Thanks to the information gained through Ultra, the war was shortened by not less than two years and probably by four years,” he said. Enigma Machine in Auction Jon Baddeley of the Bonhams auction house said during the interview that the exact number of Enigma machines produced remains unknown. ‘During the war, many were destroyed for fear of them falling into enemy hands, and documents about their manufacture were often burned or simply lost. What we do know is that there were at least five mainstream versions employed by the German military.’ He also explained how the Germans used the said devices for their coded messages. ‘The first machines to be used in a military capacity only had a fixed set of three wheels. Later, a set of five wheels were used so that they could be interchanged to dramatically increase the number of variants available. Each machine could use the interchangeable wheels from any enigma, so to find a matching set of wheels with the same serial number as the Enigma is rare.’ One such machine with that feature is the one which will be auctioned come October 29. ‘Enigma machines rarely come up at auction, and this particular example is especially unique.

It’s unusual because it has Bakelite thumb wheels instead of the more widely used metal ones: this was due to the diminishing availability of metal and other resources for the Wehrmacht [German military] towards the end of the war. t’s also special because it’s untouched and un-restored. Many machines were picked up by the allies as souvenirs during the final stages of World War II, and as such, their parts were mixed and matched. All of the elements of this one bear the same serial number, making it complete and original throughout,’ Baddeley further stated. The said Enigma machine is encased in its own carrying case made from Oak bearing the year it was manufactured – 1944. -The Las Vegas Sun and Daily Mail (UK) report; added information via Wikipedia

Question: German engineer Arthur Scherbius invented the first of what machines extensively used during WWII?
Answer: Enigma machines